Every engine has a story right? what's your childhood favorite?

Patrick:  In the late 1930's, during the depths of the depression, I was lucky to have parents that bought me a Marx Commodore Vanderbilt freight set.  I loved it!  But, down at Schuster's department store's toy department in the basement, I really remember seeing a Lionel 700E with the four articulated red/maroon cars, which I later learned was called the "Rail Chief".   Certainly cost about 20 times what my little Marx set cost at the nearby Woolworth 5 & 10 cent store.

Paul Fischer

No question about it, the Lionel 2343 Sante Fe A-A diesel set. What a wonderful Christmas present this was with the matching passenger cars. Started my love of passenger trains.

Oddly enough, it isn't the Lionel 224 postwar engine I got in 1947, but the red metal 2457 caboose that came with the set. I have 3 versions (all with lights/brake wheels/steps), and one is stamped 2467 as well as the correct 2457 (Greenberg does not list a 2467). In this one caboose...my childhood.

Favorite was 2333(43) NYC F units...These babies were not made in china.Talk about great engines . most of them still running today . I hung out as a kid with a friend who's father ran the local hardware store . Of course the store was closed on Sundays back then but not for us. Yeah  had to go  Sunday school first. 

The engine that has the most endearing memories for me is my 2056 hudson, which came with my first Lionel set when I was four year old.  I still have that set, fully intact, and the 2065 still runs fine.  It now has a new smoke unit which takes smoke fluid instead of the traditional smoke pill.  Although I don't run her often, the 2065 still bring a huge smile to my face whenever she graces the rails of my layout...... lots of wonderfully warm memories.  

My favorite wish list engines from when I was a kid back in the 1950s was the Santa Fe F3s, and the GG1, seconded by the FM Trainmaster in Virginian Livery.   I always wanted those locomotives but they were not affordable at the time.... and I had an 027 layout which did not permit such "large" locomotives. Still I got a thrill watching them operate at Christmas time in store displays though!  Always exciting!

Thanks Patrick for asking this question.  May all our railroads run flawlessly this Christmas season.  Happy Holidays to everyone on the Forum! :-)

Cheers,

Patrick W

CEO - The Free State Junction Railway. Main Office Patsburg, MD.  " Where the music is sweet and the trains always run on time"

My first one is still my favorite: a Marx 999 with four cars.  

When I started college I gave it to some family friends for their son.

Took me 51 years to find another one like it.

My Lionel memory was the ATSF 623 a loop of track 10' with a silver bridge and a paper tunnel and one flashing railroad crossing no cars at all and yet it meant the world to me!

the sad part was Christmas morning came and Santa goofed he only had one wire hooked up to track lockon the other no where to be found had to wait from Christmas morning until Monday to get to hobby store for the other wire.

it had 100 rail cars in tow roaming anywhere my imagination cared to take it we had to sell it in 1963 as no money to ship to new home in Az. and no room in car either never the less I still have fond memories of running it. 

My Marx 2-4-2, around 1956.  At least, I think it was a 2-4-2 originally.  Pretty soon it became a 0-4-0 but it never died. Boy that loco could take abuse. 

My friends Nikki and Brian and I would take apart the track on my basement 4 x 8 layout and make the longest straight we could using the layout and a table and bookcase near it, ending in a ramp that lifted up.  We would then take turns "launching" our space locomotive across my basement at my mother's laundry basket.  We'd hit it most times, but sometimes the loco would fall short or even occasionally hit the wall behind it (where spare towels and all usually hung).  That was a lot of fun. 

My Lionel 2026, with its accompanying cars, that I received for Christmas in 1951. 

I don't' have a single engine but three and they are all the same.  When I was 12 I was given three Marx sets headed by 999's plus a large number of switches and a few American Flyer accesories by a great uncle when he passes away.  These were the beginning of this O-gauge sickness that I still have 28 years later.  These three engines don't see a lot of track time but they still have a place of honor in the train room and my boys will get them when I am dead and gone.

James

Patrick, for me it was the Lionel 2245 Texas Special 027 passenger set under the Christmas tree in 1955.  My parents went through the depression and put all the earned money into our home.  I was a kid who took my Lionel catalog to bed with me and I asked for a cheap Lionel set.  Our neighbor owned a hardware store that carried Lionel trains.  It was "last years model" so my dad got it from my neighbor for a very good price.  So to see the most beautiful (to me) Lionel diesel under the tree for me on Christmas morning was the best surprise I ever had.

TEX

Steve

I have two.  The first was my father's Lionel 027 freight set which was headed up by a 2-4-2 1655 Die cast steam locomotive and a tinplate 6654W whistling tender.  He purchased this set in 1948.  My dad died in 1953 from wounds he received in World War ll.  I was only five but I have some very fond memories of him running that little freight around our Christmas tree right before we went to bed with only the tree lights on.  The effect was magical.  If I think about it hard enough I can still smell the sweet fragrance of the fresh cut pine tree and the pungent aroma of ozone as that little 1655 scooted around those tight 027 curves.  I still have this set to this day.  It looks and runs great and the whistle tender still works.  Believe me when I tell you that over the years when I was a little boy and a young adolescent this set took a heck of a lot of punishment yet everything is still entirely intact.  Quite a tribute I think to the old Lionel Corporation.  It may be a cliche but they don't make 'em like they used to. 

The second set was my grandfather's Lionel 027 freight set from 1958 which was headed up by a little 2-4-2 249 plastic steam locomotive with a striking orange stripe along its running boards and a plastic streamlined tender with a matching orange stripe.  The locomotive had no headlamp or smoking mechanism and the tender did not whistle but I loved watching my grandfather run this set.  He loved those orange stripes.  As a matter of fact so did I and I still do.  I still have this set as well and it also runs and looks great.  My grandfather died in 1960 and my grandmother gave me this set to take care of.  I did take care of it; well sort of.  I will admit that since the engine and tender were plastic I was a little gentler with it than I was with my dad's 1655 but not much.  Old Lionel; boy did they make some tough trains and have they ever provided me with some warm and pleasant memories. 

Dunno about childhood, but in my early teens I became aware of the 2-6-6-2 "Back-up Malley" (Mallet, for the spell checker)  via an article in MRR magazine.  I now have three running and a fourth in the shop.

At the age of four I lost my Marx set to a terminal case of a short circuit. I wil never forget the Christmas morning when I awakened to find an American Flyer K5 smoking and chuffing around the tree..it was a magical case of awe and wonder. I think I have been trying to recapture that moment ever since. Just pressing the button to have the whistle moan and groan was a milestone. 

For me it was a Marx set with a 666 loco.  My brother and I ran that little fella for hours on end, and it never let us down.  Tuff!  I remember a couple of years later that I got a Lionel HO set for Xmas.  It never held the charm of that Marx........

well, im only 17 and my favorite is my 1970s mighty sound of steam. i believe it came with a set called the Allegheny. It's heavy and bulky and true Americana. It PUFFS and PUFFS like no engine i know of. yes it has a tendency to be a wild engine time to time and go on its own but thats why i love it. its better than my 2008(year) lionel lines starter freight set that is weak with smoke and not as sturdy as the 1970s lionels. 

My first engine, like two posters above, and the one that solidified my interest in model trains (I was earlier hooked by my cousin's prewar Lionel set), was a Marx #999.  I ran its wheels off, but my brother got a later version, and I have that set, in very good condition, in its original box.   I wandered away into HO in my early teens,

and then became a car nut at the drivng age. I visited real railroad sites, but a tip from a supervisor into AF put me on to the Greenberg book on Marx, and, like Brer Rabbit, I was hurled back into the briar patch of Marx.

the first engine i recieved was a well used lionel texas special 1055 that was wrapped in a brown paper bag. i actually did not recieve it on christmas. my brother had a mpc era train set we shared and the steam engine broke on christmas day. my dad took it to be repaired and bought the old 1055 because i had said how i would like to have a diesel engine. so it was a late christmas present. i do still have it. 

My childhood favorite is bittersweet.

my Grandpa gave me a Lionel Cannonball Express set on Christmas back in 1990. I was 8 and it was my first Lionel set. Well, the 2-4-0 loco in that set didn't last very long without having issues. I hoped that one day I would have an engine like my grandpa's 736 or 2020.

Two Christmases later, my parents gave me a Lionel 6-18620 Illinois Central 2-6-2 steamer. I couldn't have been happier. I had a "real" die-cast Lionel steam engine. I ran that engine everyday. Subsequent Christmases brought passenger and freight cars. That engine was the world to me.

About five years later, the engine was gone. After bringing it to the train club we belonged to at the time, I left it in our living room in a paper bag. The next day the bag was mistakenly thrown out with the trash. I still havn't gotten over it and still hope to replace it some day.

A valuable lesson learned though. Now when. I take a train out of the house, it is in its box!

As a kid my dad kept his Lionel Santa Fe 2343 ABA, 726, various cars and accessories in boxes all year long. It was magical at Christmas when he would set them up under the tree.

Once we were older we started getting Lionel items at Christmas. The year I got the Amtrak four car Budd set was the best for me. I still enjoy running them around the layout even though they are conventional, lack sound, smoke and interiors. It started a quest to get all of the RDCs.

my first train was a nickel plate special in 1987.  i still have it and it is in very good shape.  it has a lot of sentimental value for me.  my grandfather picked it out for me and my mother payed for it.  my grandfather died 5 days before christmas that year.  

My favorite is the #58 GN Rotary Snowplow.  My Dad and I bought it at a Post Christmas Sale at Two Guys in Bordentown NJ.  He had been eyeing it for some time and I gave him the nudge.  I still have it.  Good Runner.  This year I am running the more recent Christmas Rotary Snowplow on the North Pole Central Line pulling a Gift dump car and a work caboose with more gifts.  When I run the Polar Express I precede it with the GN version.  No room for the PE this year though so it is resting.

growing up, Dad would set up his Lionel's around the tree. Not every year, but most of the time. I remember watching his UP 2023s, and his Santa Fe 621. He had an 1684 and a 6110 he would run once in a great while. The diesels were nice to watch, but my Uncle's 2020 Turbine is the one that really got me hooked watching running around my Grandparents tree. I love that red Keystone. When Dad passed his trains down to me after I got married, my first steamer I bought for myself was a 675, but I was sure to make a Turbine the second. My 671 is doing duty along with my 225E this Christmas. I believe that Keystone on my Uncle's 2020 is what got me hooked on the PRR.